Last Sunday I attended a one day workshop with Dr. Brian Weiss. It was held at the Marriott Marquis, where I was one of a thousand. Many hundreds, at least. We were all drawn there by our hunger for more. More enlightenment. More knowledge of our true selves. As much of that eternal spark of light as we can see through the veils of illusion that necessarily swathe us here on earth.

Dr. Weiss is most impressive. He has a quiet, careful demeanor that encompasses humor and intelligence, self esteem and courtesy for others. His background is impeccable: Columbia undergrad, Yale Medical school. He headed up the psychopharmacology division of a large hospital in Miami. I always respect the Yale degree. I went to Yale, so I have a visceral understanding of what that means–the level of hard work, commitment, self-discipline, and sheer brainpower that Yale scholarship requires.

There’s a deeper level to the Yale degree, in this case. Because Dr. Weiss is openly proclaiming the reality of past lives despite his Yale background. I personally found Yale an anti-spiritual place, not the Div school (!) but, generally speaking, the rest of the institution. So for Dr. Weiss to stand forth with these spiritual messages is an act of personal courage on his part.

Past lives make sense to me, both because I grew up with snippets of memories from other times, and because I trained in hands-on-healing at the Barbara Brennan School of Healing. In fact, it was a great relief to me to begin to integrate the shards of my consciousness into an organized meta-framework of thought at the BBSH.

So the one day workshop was welcome and nurturing to the part of me that is eternally engaged in a quixotic quest for more knowledge, more understanding, more awareness, more consciousness.

I loved listening to Dr. Weiss, but he has his own mission, which seems to be: heal the world through spiritual truth and direct experience. We did four exercises, two were regressions, one was a gestalt healing meditation, and one was a psychometry exercise. Memories came to me during the first regression; the second regression was peaceful and relaxing. I’m a morning person so it’s not surprising that my unruly monkey mind was able to step aside before lunch, but not after.

Who was I? A young woman with brightly colored skirts, living in a land of vivid blue skies and gorgeous dark mountains. There was a sense of Spain. I saw her twice, once when she was in her twenties, setting forth happily from her home on her business. Then I saw her at the end of her life, white haired and dissolving. Her granddaughter sat in a chair at the end of her bed, tenderly watching her pass. I recognized the little girl as someone who has reappeared in this life, and I was happy to know that our souls have history together.

What distinguishes past life memories from fantasy? For me, it is the compelling, often intense, always poignant emotional matrix within which the memories are held. I am a storyteller and there is always a story playing in my mind, and day-dreaming is part of the creative process for writing novels. But despite my active and involved inner life of wool-gathering, those stories never have the richness, resonance, and depth of past life memories.

The day was splendid. I recommend it. And I heartily recommend the books written by Dr. Weiss.

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